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Before we get into this post, I want to let you know about our giant How to Squat guide. It covers everything you need to know about every aspect of the squat – from biomechanics to correcting weaknesses to technique. Click here to open it in a new tab so you can check it out after you’ve finished reading this article.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

So, when you have a sticking point in one of your main lifts, it’s generally a good idea to ask: “What group of muscles is most likely to be limiting my performance though this range of motion?” For example, if you always miss your bench press at lockout, generally you need to strengthen your triceps so they’ll be strong enough to finish extending your elbows. Once you strengthen your triceps to ensure lockout isn’t an issue, your bench will generally go up, and the sticking point will generally move to some other point in the lift.

However, sometimes a sticking point is never going to go away.

That’s the case with the squat. 90%+ of people miss the squat just above parallel. They can get the weight moving out of the hole, but they miss the lift about midway up.

(It probably looks something like this when you miss a squat.)

No matter how much work you do to “fix” that sticking point, it’s probably never going to go away, or migrate to another place in the lift.

Why?

That’s just objectively the least advantageous position biomechanically. As you come up out of the hole, hip extension demands don’t change in any meaningful way until you’re above your sticking point. I wrote about this study, which examined the effects of depth and loading on hip, knee, and ankle extension demands in the squat here: Making Sense of Strength.

As you can see, with heavy loads (at 90%), hip extension demands hardly change until you’re standing almost all the way up. 60 degrees of knee flexion – where hip extension demands finally start decreasing – is basically a quarter-squat position.

So what does that have to do with anything? You may remember from that same article that knee extension demands peak at the very bottom of a squat.

Doesn’t that mean that the bottom position is inherently the weakest position, and that as you come out of the hole, the lift just gets progressively easier on the quads, and stays just as challenging for the hip extensors?

If that were the case, if you could start extending your hips and knees at all (which you can, unless you’re trying to squat a weight way above you max), then you’d always be able to finish the lift. The common “sticking point” would involve just getting crushed at the bottom of the lift, and a sticking point above parallel would just be some sort of strange aberration.

However, that is, by far, the most common sticking point. So what’s going on here?

The key is that your muscles don’t produce the same amount of force throughout their entire range of motion. They’re not mechanical engines that can produce the same amount of torque at every joint angle.

When your muscles are at their resting length, they produce the most active force – force you actively produce by flexing the muscle. This is because at resting length, your muscles can produce the greatest number of cross bridges between actin and myosin – the contractile proteins in your muscles. You can see that illustrated here.

As the muscle lengthens, active force decreases, and passive force increases. Passive force comes from elastic energy stored in the tendons and the connective tissue that weaves its way through the muscle and holds it together. As the length of the muscle increases, elastic energy increases exponentially, until it’s stretched too far, resulting in a muscle strain or tear.

So, when you put those two factors together, the standard length-tension relationship of a muscle looks more like this:

That dip in the green line: That’s your sticking point.

At the bottom of the squat, hip extension demands are high, but some of your hip extensors (potentially your glutes, probably your adductors, particularly your adductor magnus, and probably not your hamstrings) are in a stretched position, meaning that the total muscular force you can produce is very high.

Once you break through your sticking point, the muscles aren’t as stretched, but they’re getting closer to resting length, so the amount of force they can produce increases again (plus, the extension torque demands decrease anyways).

At the sticking point, however, you’re in that lull – the dip toward the right on the green line above.

If you can shift your hips forward just a little bit, that can help decrease the hip extension demands just enough that you can break on through your sticking point and complete the lift.

These are two good examples of how this looks in practice:

The second rep here is also a great example. This technique is very popular among weightlifters:

When people try this for the first time, they often have a tendency to shift forward onto their toes. To counter this tendency, lead out of the hole by driving your traps back into the bar aggressively.

The movement should actually feel a lot like a deadlift. A deadlift is generally cued “shoulders back” and “hips forward” to keep the hips from drifting back away from the bar. You should drive out of the bottom of a squat with the same intention; instead of thinking about driving the bar up, your main goal coming out of the hole should be to try to “un-fold” yourself by driving your shoulders back into the bar and driving your hips forward back under the bar. If you’re aggressive enough with driving your shoulders back into the bar, it’ll counter the forward shift of your hips so that the weight stays balanced over the middle of your foot, instead of shifting forward toward your toes.

2) Learn to brace effectively

There’s a lot that has been said about bracing, and it’s a topic that deserves more than a single sub-point. I’m working on an article that’ll cover this point in much more depth, and that will illustrate just how much effective bracing can improve your strength. But, for the time being, this video explains it pretty well, these YouTube Channels (Quinn Henoch, Darkside Strength) have a lot of great information about breathing and bracing, and this review article on Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization is a good place to start as well.

1) GET STRONGER

Remember, this particular sticking point isn’t one you can get rid of. It’s not indicative of a particular muscular weakness; it’s just mechanically the least favorable position. Strengthening a particular muscle or muscle group isn’t going to eradicate it.

So, as usual, this common question has a simple answer. How do you fix the sticking point in your squat above parallel? You don’t. You’re stuck with it forever. What you CAN do, though, is make sure you’re hitting your sticking point with as much speed as possible, fighting to get your hips back under the bar (very similar to a deadlift), and bracing effectively. Those three things can help a lot, but at the end of the day, you’ll still be left with the same sticking point because it’s simply the least favorable spot in the lift. You just need to keep squatting and get stronger.

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About Greg Nuckols

Greg Nuckols has over a decade of experience under the bar, and a BS in Exercise and Sports Science. He’s held 3 all-time world records in powerlifting in the 220 and 242 classes.

He’s trained hundreds of athletes and regular folks, both online and in-person. He’s written for many of the major magazines and websites in the fitness industry, including Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, Bodybuilding.com, T-Nation, and Schwarzenegger.com. Furthermore, he’s had the opportunity to work with and learn from numerous record holders, champion athletes, and collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches through his previous job as Chief Content Director for Juggernaut Training Systems and current full-time work here on Stronger By Science.

His passions are making complex information easily understandable for athletes, coaches, and fitness enthusiasts, helping people reach their strength and fitness goals, and drinking great beer.

Oh no I meant driving the hips upwards and maintaining your back angle on the way up. Starting Strength has a section in the squat about this and the cue is the coach pushing lightly down on your lower back, just above the tail bone, so that you’re able to drive that part directly to the ceiling. That seems mutually exclusive to the methods described here. Thoughts?

Maintain torso angle until the instant you can start getting more upright? Sure. But is cuing someone to purposefully drive their hips up (which often puts people into a GM-squat position) the best way to accomplish that? Nope.

I’ve yet to see someone in a good morning position under the eye of a decent coach who can differentiate between hip drive (up) and knee extension alone (hips go back). If it does happen, it’s because they failed to anchor their back angle with their hamstrings. Hips forward isn’t a good solution as it slackens the hamstrings and increases the moment arm acting on the knee joint, leading to a less effective strength exercise. Drive hips up and maintain torso is the solution. You can also cue the lifter to maintain their knee position during the first half of the ascent.

That’s not an overly relevant consideration, as the hamstrings hardly change length at all through the squat, due to being a biarticular joint.

“and increases the moment arm acting on the knee joint”

Which is a good thing through that ROM. RME for the knee extensors is lower than it is for the hip extensors through the sticking point, so shifting some of the work back to the quads balances the work between the knee and hip extensors and makes it a more efficient exercise.

It is relevant as hamstring tension is what makes the squat a safe exercise for the knees. And I’m not talking about your alleged universal sticking point, I’m talking out of the hole which is what Nagy and Chris were talking about.

“Shifting some of the work back to the quads”
You’re assuming that the work ever left the quads to begin with. That would be the knees shifting backwards, which the trainee must be coached out of. Of course this isn’t controlled for in the study, since those conducting it aren’t experienced strength coaches who know how to coach the squat.

Not to mention, both the anterior and posterior shear forces are well below what the structures of the knee can tolerate in the first place. Check out pages 8 and 9 of “Analysis of the load on the knee joint and the vertebral column with changes in squatting depth and weight load” by Hartmann. I’m pretty sure it’s open access. If not, I can email it to you.

“You’re assuming that the work ever left the quads to begin with.”

Not binary. Matter of degree.

“Of course this isn’t controlled for in the study, since those conducting it aren’t experienced strength coaches who know how to coach the squat.”

That’s quite an assumption. The lead author is a powerlifter, and the person who runs the lab (Loren Chiu) is a weightlifter, weightlifting coach, and CSCS. It’s from an exceptionally good lab for biomechanics research.

That doesn’t boost my confidence in their work remotely. I know plenty of powerlifters and weight lifters who can’t coach.

I don’t need to pit my experience as a coach against any study. I’ve seen hundreds of cases of knee pain both in person and online. One thing all individuals have in common is when they learn to squat correctly, which involves balanced anterior/posterior forces on the knee, their pain goes away immediately or within 2 weeks.

All you needed to do was say from the outset that you have no faith in science that contradicts your personal experience. Then we could have just forgone this discussion and not wasted each others’ time.

On the flip side, you should preface your articles with bold text stating that all you do is interpret largely irrelevant data gathered from subjects who are not even taught to squat. “Science bitch!”(Breaking Bad)

I mean really, why should I, a rational individual, take a study about squats seriously when I don’t know what kind of squats are being done.

I may have missed one or two, but I’ve read almost every study published on the squat since the 70s. Sure, there are varying degrees of quality, but the first thing you learn in any research methods class is that ensuring the validity of your results is paramount. Garbage in (if it’s poorly controlled, if you didn’t isolate enough variables, or, most saliently here, if the subjects weren’t properly instructed about the testing protocols), garbage out. Every scientist knows that, and they do everything they can to ensure the validity of their results.

There have been studies performed on new lifters, experienced lifters, world-class lifters (both powerlifters and weightlifters). There have been EMG studies, modeling studies, and kinematic studies. The vast majority of them paint a very consistent picture. It is highly unlikely that all of them are wrong.

Coincidentally, the picture they paint is also very consistent with my experience as an athlete and coach, and it’s consistent with the experiences of the majority of top-level athletes I know, and the majority of highly successful coaches I know.

You can know what types of squats are being performed if you read the studies.

You can know how relevant the data are if you read the studies. You can even email the researchers if you have questions – they generally email back (do you know any researchers, and have you conducted any research or been involved in any research in this field, by the way?).

But I have a lurking suspicion that you haven’t read the studies you’re criticizing, and haven’t read anywhere close to the entire body of literature on the subject.

Cheeky, cheeky, Greg! 🙂
Andrew: He adressed this in that and previous articles http://www.strengtheory.com/hamstrings-the-most-overrated-muscle-for-squat-2-0/ . At least you could reason for yourself how these mechanisms go with Rippetoes version of “hip drive”. Then again, even Rippetoe isnt very clear about hip drive; contrary to his videos, in SS strength hip drive simply describes a cue to extend the knees without altering the hip/back angle in the first part of the ascent.

Chris M says: Rippetoe isnt very clear about hip drive; contrary to his videos, in SS strength hip drive simply describes a cue to extend the knees without altering the hip/back angle in the first part of the ascent.

Apparently it does need clarification, since some people think the hip angle doesn’t change out of the hole.

What you put in quotes is indeed a tautology, but it’s not what I said. I specified that the hip extensors open the hip angle immediately in the ascent, as opposed to sometime later like Chris seems to think.

Of course they’re synonymous, Greg. But we’re talking about the hip angle, and I prefer to use the words open and close because “extending the hip angle” is incorrect and “extending the hips” removes the angle part of it.

“No one here said that”

Really man? What is going on in that head of yours right now? Read:

“extend the knees without altering the hip/back angle”
and
“Isn’t extending your knees while not altering your back angle mostly facilitated by the quads…”

How does one extend the knees in a back squat while maintaining the back angle without extending the hips? One doesn’t. And if the hips extend, how is hip drive “mostly facilitated by the quads”?

The whole premise of the article was that the sticking point occurred during the lull in force production for the hip extensors, ergo, they’re shorter than they were in the hole, then hip extension necessarily occurred between the bottom of the squat and the sticking point. In context, “extend the knees without altering the hip/back angle” I took to mean “extend the knees while keeping the torso inclined to roughly the same degree.”

And yes, extending your knees while not altering your back angle is mostly facilitated by the quads. You could argue total percentage of work done, but again, in context most people are concerned more with how much torque is being generated at a joint compared to the maximum amount of torque you’re capable of generating at a joint (RME). RME is higher for the knee extensors than it is for the hip extensors at the bottom of a squat.

I won’t debate this on this since my experience with exercise studies is that they are useless and are conducted by individuals who, while intelligent, are entirely inexperienced with coaching the barbell lifts. These same studies are the entire basis of each and every one of your arguments.

I don’t know what kind of squats these tested subjects performed, and I’m not convinced that the methods for measuring muscular activity employed are at all reliable.

This is the most compelling thing I’ve heard so far on this discussion:

“Set the pins at half squat height (around the height you’d be when you’re at your sticking point). Load the bar, and try to squat the weight from the pins. If you get the rep, add more weight. Keep doing this until you can’t lift it anymore. What MOST people find is that they’re stronger from the exact same bar height if they shift their hips forward under the bar. Even people who tend to sit back more in their squat – the lifts may look identical to the top half of their normal squat with lighter loads, but once the weights start nearing their max, they’ll still generally shift their hips forward a bit. Once people realize they’re stronger in that position through that range of motion, they generally realize how beneficial it can be to try to drive their hips forward under the bar.”

I’ve not tried this myself, but the only caveat I could see would be alleged “hip drive” working more effectively from the bottom of the squat.

Greg–have you tried this same test from the hole? I suppose running the test from the sticking point makes more sense, though. Otherwise, even if the result of the test from the hole was reversed, and your sticking point was at half height, that would mean that hip drive is effective up until your sticking point (which makes it fairly INEFFECTIVE anyway).

Sometimes when I hit a sticking point in the squat, my hips naturally drive under the bar to save the lift. Do you think these Oly lifters are driving the hips under the bar intentionally? In the 310*2 video, Eduardo only used this technique in the second rep.

I know some weightlifters are taught to do this, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it just comes naturally to a lot of them, because of how often they front squat. This technique helps a lot with back squat, but it helps considerably more with front squat. Most people who front squat often figure this out for themselves, and it makes sense that they’d apply it to the back squat as well.

“Is this also the reason why many people try to open up their hips in the decent (a bit like sumo deadlift)?”

Nah, that’s just more of a comfort/safety thing. Stance width dictated by hip anatomy, and how much the knees are pointed out is dictated by stance width (trying to keep the knees tracking toward the toes, instead of caving inside).

“Does stance width matter to ‘reduce’ the sticking point?”

Nah, not really. At least not in any general sense. You’ll probably be stronger with one particular stance than another, but there’s not one that’s inherently stronger than the rest.

Hi Greg,
Great article! I have a question: How do you find “the bounce” in going out of the hole? Most weightlifters are using It, and I’ve beene using it as well, because I’ve always thought It’s best to go possibly fast out of the hole, but recently I met with an opiniom it might be derogatory for your knees/tendons. What do you think about It?

“Based on biomechanical calculations and measurements of cadaver knee joints, the highest retropatellar compressive forces and stresses can be seen at 90°. With increasing flexion, the wrapping effect contributes to an enhanced load distribution and enhanced force transfer with lower retropatellar compressive forces. Additionally, with further flexion of the knee joint a cranial displacement of facet contact areas with continuous enlargement of the retropatellar articulating surface occurs. Both lead to lower retropatellar compressive stresses. Menisci and cartilage, ligaments and bones are susceptible to anabolic metabolic processes and functional structural adaptations in response to increased activity and mechanical influences. Concerns about degenerative changes of the tendofemoral complex and the apparent higher risk for chondromalacia, osteoarthritis, and osteochondritis in deep squats are unfounded. With the same load configuration as in the deep squat, half and quarter squat training with comparatively supra-maximal loads will favour degenerative changes in the knee joints and spinal joints in the long term. Provided that technique is learned accurately under expert supervision and with progressive training loads, the deep squat presents an effective training exercise for protection against injuries and strengthening of the lower extremity. Contrary to commonly voiced concern, deep squats do not contribute increased risk of injury to passive tissues.”

Good one, Greg. Enjoy these type articles very much! Greg, I have thought about this very question going back a few years now. It is a true dilemma.

Here’s the odd, confounding paradox; the twist in the plot that makes my head hurt:

If you asked someone to squat the exact same load that causes them to fail at the aforementioned universal sticking point when squatting from below parallel; but this time to stop and reverse from this exact sticking point angle, they will likely complete this second (partial) squat.

You see this all the time when the bros start trying to artificially inflate their squat ego numbers, they shave ROM, and squat to just above parallel…to roughly the same joint angles as this dreaded sticking point (when the load is taken from below.)

Ask them to move THROUGH this ROM from a deep squat, and not REVERSE from this point, and they get stuck.

Why is this?

It seems to have something to do about switching from quads to hips midstream, but I can’t figure out why this wouldn’t come into play on partial squat, just the same as moving through the same zone from a full squat.

If this sticking point is an unfavorable collection of joint angles, negotiating the overlapping levers of shank to femur, and femur to hip, and hip to torso…then the just above parallel squat should be WEAKER than a below parallel squat?

But paradoxically it is stronger if reversed from there, and not moved through. Enlighten me, good sir!

Set the pins at half squat height (around the height you’d be when you’re at your sticking point). Load the bar, and try to squat the weight from the pins. If you get the rep, add more weight. Keep doing this until you can’t lift it anymore. What MOST people find is that they’re stronger from the exact same bar height if they shift their hips forward under the bar. Even people who tend to sit back more in their squat – the lifts may look identical to the top half of their normal squat with lighter loads, but once the weights start nearing their max, they’ll still generally shift their hips forward a bit. Once people realize they’re stronger in that position through that range of motion, they generally realize how beneficial it can be to try to drive their hips forward under the bar.

It’s actually somewhat like a high rack deadlift. People who have poor deadlift lockouts can still generally pull weights well above their max if they do rack pulls from above the knee. The reason they can’t pull that much from the floor is that by the time the bar passes their knee, they’re in an entirely different position than the one they purposefully get in if they’re doing high rack pulls. This is similar, except that once you realize what position you’re strongest in through that ROM in the squat, you CAN generally shift back forward to re-create it with full-ROM reps

Hi greg, completely unrelated question but my email wont work, I’ve bought average to savage and such and also read your art and science of lifting and bulgarian method however I would like to know in detail your yearly training? I dont feel any of your articles REALLY delve into it and was just curious. Thanks a lot -Jack

Offseason – get jacked if lean, cut if fat. Transition – lean back out if bulking, dial back volume a bit to recover. Then standard block periodization leading into a meet. Accumulation block (higher volume, lower intensity), intensification block (decrease volume a bit, and raise intensity), and realization block (taper and peak).

my personal yearly training? I plan to compete again in the future, but I’m not training for anything in particular at the moment, so I just lift for pleasure. I essentially just go to the gym and do whatever sounds fun for the day.

“getting freaking jacked” Does that include any heavy work or just high sets of the big three 1-3 times a week with accessories? My struggle is do I add heavy work to my “getting freaking jacked” cycela dn if so how

The context: I do not plan on competing for 2-4 years as I am 16 at the moment and its not one of my priorities. However in future I do wish to compete but I also want to get stronger now because, well, who doesn’t. So basically i’ve a couple years of “off season”. My form on heavy lifts could be A LOT better (hips shoot up then I muscle the weight with my back on squat for example), however i could also be bigger. Im bigger than the average adult at about 160lbs ~12% bodyfat. My lifts are really not impressive (~315 squat, ~190 bench and ~365 deadlift).

Hello Greg, I was curious to know what your opinion is on deliberate knee valgus in the squat. There’s obviously a bit of danger in the movement relative to knees tracking perfectly over toes, but I believe that purposefully using a minor amount of valgus can improve leg drive (particularly in the sticking point). It’s pretty common to see weightlifters, particularly women (and Hysen Pulaku) using this.

I think, more than anything, it helps with confidence grinding through the sticking point. The sticking point is really just the least mechanically advantageous point in the lift, so it’s never really going to go away, but I do think pin squats can help you get practice with that grind to help you avoid form breakdown.

I, like many others, have a sticking point above parallel. For a long time, this never made sense to me, as I assumed that the horizontal distance between the hips and bar, and therefore the moment arm against the hips and the hip extension demands, would be greatest at parallel, where (obviously) the femurs are horizontal. Well, it turns out I was wrong. I took some video of my squats directly from the side recently and in fact my hips move back quite noticeably above parallel, presumably because the knees are extending and moving backwards at the same time. The point of greatest horizontal distance between hips and bar, in my squat at least, occurs well above parallel, at the bottom of my sticking point region. Not a coincidence, I’m guessing.

[…] you have a weaker back, you can stay more upright, and when you hit the sticking point, you can drive your hips back under the bar (which reduces hip extension torque, which is still high through the sticking point, and shift more […]